On Friday I only had my helper friend. My general helper begged off as I must have worn her out on Thursday. I set up a cool place for my helper friend to work on hanging plants, in the doorway to the laundry. We’ve always done them in the office where there are hooks near the wood stove to hang them from. But it was going to be too hot to work there on Friday.
We started with the spider plant and he worked on it by himself. It’s hanger was still in good shape so we left it on.
This is what it looked like after.
This is the huge purple jew before. I sat at the kitchen table to try to salvage what I could while my helper did the standing parts in the doorway.
The problem is that a jew is a soft stemmed trailing plant, not a hanging plant. The weight of the trailing parts killed the stem where it went over the lip of the cache pot.
So I saved as many of the living ends as I could. This shows the biggest pieces and the smallest. I had already put the midsized ones in water.
I have this nice south window in the clean room but had no plants in it as I had to get to the window twice a day to do shades. But the smaller sleeves for the jars of water fit on the 2 shelves, so now I have plants in the clean room.
These were the stems that had not died as they went over the edge. But that’s ok.
The original plant was a 7” plant when I bought it in May 2021 and you can see how much it grew in 18 months. It will be huge again by autumn.
Some of my plant hangers had deteriorated in the sun and I hoped to replace them before they broke. The worst was the grandma Christmas cactus in the office. I had found 3 nice hangers online so I was able to do this job.
My helper friend and I got the cactus into the new hanger with only 1 small broken branch.
The next worst hanger was on the wandering jew in the office. It hadn’t been there long, and had had a major adjustment to make, going from a sunny east window, to a darker north one. So it hadn’t grown a lot.
My helper and I untangled all the long trailing stems and got the old hanger out by cutting it. Then we managed to get it back into the new hanger, and twine the long stems around again. We only broke 1.
The very worst plant needing work was the philodendron in the office.
This came from BuyNothing in 2018 and was a good sized plant then. It had gotten enormous and the weight of the stems had started killing them as they went over the cache pot, just like the wandering jew.
We got about ⅔of it done when he had to leave. I’d been standing for an hour working on it and could do no more. So it is still hanging in the doorway.
After rest, I was able to clean up the messes we made and get all the cuttings into water. I hope to finish it on Saturday.
All afternoon the wind came up and the temperatures plummeted. I got both stove roaring by 3PM and pulled shades early. I kept loading the stoves up until I went to bed at 10PM.
When I got up at 6AM, the living room was only 66F even though the masonry heater read 162F. I checked the thermometer and found it at -22F. The wind had died down in the night.
The office was 55F and I got the stove roaring again. The sun came out at 7:45 so I got the shades pulled up. With the sun, both sides of the house were back in the mid 70’s by 10AM, but both stoves are going strong.
The forecast is for +16F by late afternoon but by noon it had only gotten up to +4F, so we will see. The sun is very bright and helping heat the house a lot. But I plan to keep the stoves going all day. It’s not to be so cold Saturday night, in the teens F, and to be in the 40’s by early afternoon on Sunday. Bizarre weather!
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I guess your original helper could not hang in there, lol
She's a little bit of a thing and gives 110% when she is here. But this isn't the first time I wore her out...
The flowers are so beautiful and healthy. One thing that I have observed in the home gardening is that they are easily to be cared. Thanks so much.
Wow! You have so many hanging plants. The weather seemed very drastic this year. Too cold for me to survive on such low temperatures.
Good to have wood stove!
Hello lovely lady! 😊
We have been having similar weather here as well, -41 C with the wind chill yesterday and -28 C here right now, brr. Did I mention that I'm not a fan of winter? The colder temperatures are one of the reasons I don't like it. I'm not good at being cold and my hands haven't been warm, other than while holding my tea, in the past two days. Thankfully, it's supposed to warm up over the next few days, of course, that could change by the next time I check the forecast, but for now, its supposed to warm up a bit. Yay! 😊
Wishing you warmer temperatures there as well. 😊
God bless you and your wonderful family. Have an awesome day my fabulous friend! 😊
Wauw what a wonderful plants, very nice to have them hanging, a good option for here, so the cats wont use them as toilet
I’ve been fortunate with plants not hung in that none of my cats ever tried to use them that way. Knock wood future ones don’t try.
Wait what -- -22F! What kind of crazy cold is that! Brrr.
Funny you should write about hanging plants - I'm in the market for a few as I was at a friends place and she had some lovely hoya in macrame pots that I think I could make room for in my life - plus I am bored with my house so a hanging plant or two might be more interesting...
Yeah, it's been a couple years since we've had that cold. Used be an every year thing for 7 - 10 days.
I have a very old hoya, a rope plant, in the office.
Omg that's the one I want!!!